Authors of books on business ethics and corporate social responsibility fall into two general approaches when they answer the question: Why should a business firm, which represents private property, have greater obligations to the local community than an ordinary citizen? Authors generally subscribe to a rights approach or to a power model. This paper will present four rights approaches and three power models which are used to describe the relationship of the firm to society. Introducing these different approaches and models (...) will be two brief expositions which provide the setting for determining the relationship of a firm to society. The first traces two lines to the development of the contemporary American corporation. The second views the business corporation as a quasi-public institution. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine of (...) the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 9-13.

This essay adopts a semiotic perspective focused on practices of communication, movement, and translation to examine the global impact of A. J. Greimas and his oeuvre. The linguist and semiotician’s lecture trips abroad, the number and provenance of international students in his Paris seminar, and the chronology and linguistic geography of translations of his work help describe, gauge, and explain the dissemination and development of his ideas throughout the world. His project has engendered distinctive appropriations and at times productive institutional (...) structures in a number of cultural and linguistic contexts, notably Romance, Anglo-American, Germanic, Russian, Lithuanian, and Chinese. The broader historical relations between France and other lands, and the extent of each society’s use of the French language have conditioned, fostered, or impeded responses to his proposals. The conclusion’s discussion of the relative importance of personal contacts, socio-historical context, and the sociolinguistic and pedagogical status of French for his international reception aims to contribute to general methodological debates in the history of science and ideas and in transnational history. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 409-438.

Carneades is an open source argument mapping application and a programming library for building argumentation support tools. In this paper, Carneades’ support for argument reconstruction, evaluation and visualization is illustrated by modeling most of the factual and legal arguments in Popov v Hayashi.

While pragmatic arguments for numerical probability axioms have received much attention, justifications for axioms of qualitative probability have been less discussed. We offer an argument for the requirement that an agent’s qualitative judgments be probabilistically representable, inspired by, but importantly different from, the Money Pump argument for transitivity of preference and Dutch book arguments for quantitative coherence. The argument is supported by a theorem, to the effect that a subject is systematically susceptible to dominance given her preferred acts, if and (...) only if the subject’s comparative judgments preclude representation by a standard probability measure. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967 Medieval Minds looks at the Middle Ages as a period with changing attitudes towards mental health and its treatment. The book argues that it was a period that that bridged the ancient with the modern, ignorance with knowledge and superstition with science. The Middle Ages spanned almost a millennium in the history of the humanities and provided the people of this period with the benefit of this knowledge. The book looks at the promise and progress which (...) was reflected by thinkers such as Augustin and Aurelianus, Alexander of Tralles and Paul of Aegina. The book also looks at martyrs like Valentine and Dympna, and the patrons of those afflicted with illnesses such as epilepsy and insanity. Written by the psychologist Thomas Francis Graham, this book provides a distinct and unique insight into the mind of those living in the medieval period and will be of interest to academics of history and literature alike. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This chapter contains sections titled: Varieties of Divine Action God as Agent of Intentional Actions Divine Action and Created Causes Works cited.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thucydides 1.22.1: Content and Form in the SpeechesThomas F. GarrityThe interpretive problem posed by the speeches of Thucydides is one of the oldest chestnuts in classical scholarship. It has long been debated whether the historian claimed and/or attempted to present verbatim accounts of the arguments put forward by the speakers on each occasion as best he could, or whether he felt free to modify or to invent particular arguments (...) or even whole speeches. And the controversy has been fueled by what has been widely regarded as the ambiguity of the second of the two parts of Thucydides’ famous statement of aims and methods in 1.22.1,. I propose here, instead, that the language in which scholars have found confusion is actually a clear statement pertaining both to the content and to the form in which the speeches are presented by Thucydides.THE ASSUMPTION IN SCHOLARSHIPThe perceived ambiguity of 1.22.1 has baffled generations of scholars, as they have attempted to relate their understanding of Thucydides’ statement concerning the presentation of speeches to what they themselves perceive as the historian’s practice throughout the History. In general, the debate has been characterized by a concerted and ongoing attempt to control the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary in 1.22.1 as a necessary ingredient in the construction of interpretive arguments. This uncompromising insistence on a study based on a close examination of Thucydides’ Greek is most evident in the early German scholarship, conducted [End Page 361] primarily from the point of view of the problem of composition.1 In subsequent research, scholars begin to place less emphasis on the significance of the programmatic statement strictly in relation to the problem of composition, but they remain devoted to the idea that a correct understanding of the historian’s aims and methods derives from a precise understanding of the Greek in 1.22.1.2 For all the efforts, however, of such well–known students of Greek, scholars remain sharply divided over the precise meaning of Thucydides’ programmatic statement.Not all participants in the debate, however, have felt this obligation to deduce the precise meaning of the Greek contained in the historian’s programmatic statement. And it is perhaps a measure of despair over finding a solution to the perceived enigma in 1.22.1 that some scholars have found it possible, especially in more recent times, to construct elaborate theories about the historian’s presentation of speeches without providing a detailed analysis of Thucydides’ own statement of aims and methods. The accepted ambiguity of 1.22.1, moreover, has provided such scholars with what they consider to be primary evidence with which they might successfully call into question the “objectivity” of Thucydides as a “scientific historian,” and with which they might thereby persuasively promote the view of him as either an impassioned (outraged) moralist or a tendentious manipulator of his reader’s sympathies.3 [End Page 362]In particular, the traditional view that the dependent participial clause,, is a qualification, or refinement, of the main assertion,,..., is what has led to the assumption that Thucydides is making two separate statements limited to the aspect of the content of the speeches.4 The result of this assumption has been to accept the notion that ambiguity exists in 1.22.1, as no satisfactory analysis has been put forward to explain how Thucydides can at one and the same time be presenting—in terms of content—“what was appropriate” () and “what was really said” (). And some scholars, for whom it is not adequate simply to question the reliability of Thucydides as a historical source, have taken a more extreme step: seizing on the traditional acknowledgment of the difficulties present in 1.22.1, they argue that the dependent participial clause,, is not a qualification at all but rather actually an explicit contradiction of the main assertion,.5 Thucydidean scholarship, then, has presented itself with an ironic result: the inherited assumption in scholarship that both parts of 1.22.1 refer only to the content of the speeches, first developed and seemingly permanently entrenched by early readers of Greek—so many of whom were committed to defending... (shrink)

Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field‐theories (...) of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis‐temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust. (shrink)

The vulnerability of participants in Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) programs is a consequence of the illnesses that they are experiencing; ethical guarantees must be in place that ensure the dignity of the persons involved in such programs. Dignity is more than an individual concern; it has individual, institutional, and societal dimensions. An ethical framework is proposed that involves the interrelated vulnerabilities and needs of individuals and communities and our societal response to them. Among the issues given (...) particular attention are individual and community stigmatization, target population involvement in program planning, balance with regard to confidentiality and privacy, the place of proportionality grounded in a rich sense of community as a guiding ethical principle, and guidelines for SAMHSA programs. (shrink)

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for (...) social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

We present a formal, mathematical model of argument structure and evaluation, taking seriously the procedural and dialogical aspects of argumentation. The model applies proof standards to determine the acceptability of statements on an issue-by-issue basis. The model uses different types of premises (ordinary premises, assumptions and exceptions) and information about the dialectical status of statements (stated, questioned, accepted or rejected) to allow the burden of proof to be allocated to the proponent or the respondent, as appropriate, for each premise separately. (...) Our approach allows the burden of proof for a premise to be assigned to a different party than the one who has the burden of proving the conclusion of the argument, and also to change the burden of proof or applicable proof standard as the dialogue progresses from stage to stage. Useful for modeling legal dialogues, the burden of production and burden of persuasion can be handled separately, with a different responsible party and applicable proof standard for each. Carneades enables critical questions of argumentation schemes to be modeled as additional premises, using premise types to capture the varying effect on the burden of proof of different kinds of questions. (shrink)

Examines how Stieglitz's work influenced Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson and discusses how photography reshaped literary aesthetics.

Liberal articulations of the right to die generally focus on balancing individual rights against state interests, but this approach does not take full advantage of the disruptive potential of this contested right. This article develops an alternative to the liberal approach to the right to die by engaging the seemingly discordant philosophical perspectives of Michel Foucault and Thomas Hobbes. Despite Foucault’s objections, a rapprochement between these perspectives is established by focusing on their shared emphasis on the role that death (...) plays in the order of modernity. After the article has established the complementarity of Foucault and Hobbes, Hobbes’ unique stance toward suicide is first viewed in the context of the early-modern hostility toward suicide, and then contrasted with Foucault’s Stoic-inspired affirmation of suicide. This comparison of these two philosophers’ positions on suicide opens to contestation dimensions of modern subjects that remain undisturbed by liberal approaches to the right to die Key Words: bio-power • Michel Foucault • governmentality • Thomas Hobbes • liberalism • right to die • self-preservation • Seneca • Stoicism • suicide. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 1-3.

We show that every nonzero $\Sigma _{2}^{0}$ enumeration degree bounds a nonsplitting nonzero enumeration degree.

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...) More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation. (shrink)

This collection of eminently practical advice from the likes of Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Pythagoras, and Aristotle covers subjects as diverse as money, child-raising, politics, philosophy, law, and relationships--all aspects of life and how to live it. Thomas Cleary has translated these sayings and aphorisms from the Arabic sources that preserved Greek thought throughout the Middle Ages. Many of the texts no longer exist in the original Greek. Included in the book is an appendix that presents resonant sayings and fragments (...) from Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim sources, demonstrating the universal quality of the teachings of the Greek sages and hinting at the interaction between Western and Eastern cultures. (shrink)

We show that there is a first order sentence φ(x; a, b, l) such that for every computable partial order.

The concept of "ecological niche" is frequently employed in sociocultural anthropology, but there have been few systematic applications of it. This paper examines the utility of the concept for the analysis of social interaction and change, with special reference to complex societies. In a small agricultural valley of northern California, competition between two status groups over a scarce resource--land--has led to displacement and changing patterns of resource use. "Niche" describes the aggregate outcome of underlying processes of competition on the individual (...) level. (shrink)

Honor, fearlessness, calm, decisive action, strategic thinking, and martial prowess have been the hallmarks of the Japanese samurai culture through the ages. Their ethos is known as bushido, or the way of the warrior-knight. Here is an insider’s view of the samurai—their moral and psychological development, the ethical standards they strive to uphold, their training in both martial arts and strategy, and the enormous role that the traditions of Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism had in influencing their ideals. Thomas (...) Cleary has collected writings on bushido by warriors, scholars, political advisors, and educators from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries that provide a comprehensive, historically rich view of samurai life and education. The selections deal with a broad range of subjects—from military strategy and political science to personal discipline and character development. Cleary includes an introduction to each piece, putting it into historical context and presenting biographical information about the authors. This is an essential read for martial artists and anyone interested in samurai history, but it will also appeal to readers in the fields of government, military, religion, and education. (shrink)

The provability logic of a theory $T$ is the set of modal formulas, which under any arithmetical realization are provable in $T$. We slightly modify this notion by requiring the arithmetical realizations to come from a specified set $\Gamma$. We make an analogous modification for interpretability logics. We first study provability logics with restricted realizations and show that for various natural candidates of $T$ and restriction set $\Gamma$, the result is the logic of linear frames. However, for the theory Primitive (...) Recursive Arithmetic (PRA), we define a fragment that gives rise to a more interesting provability logic by capitalizing on the well-studied relationship between PRA and I$\Sigma_1$. We then study interpretability logics, obtaining upper bounds for IL(PRA), whose characterization remains a major open question in interpretability logic. Again this upper bound is closely related to linear frames. The technique is also applied to yield the nontrivial result that IL(PRA) $\subset$ ILM. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...) and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

In this essay I will examine the changing historical relationship between two fundamentally modern concepts: self-preservation and self-ownership. These two concepts have served a dual function in modernity. On the one hand, they are crucial parts of the theoretical underpinning of liberalism: the natural law of self-preservation is the foundation of the rational inclination to form civil society (e.g., Hobbes); and self-ownership provides the foundation for the liberal (i.e., Lockean) notion of private property. But on the other hand, these two (...) concepts serve much more than a theoretical purpose; they also perform a duty in what I would like to call, borrowing Foucault's phrase, a modern technology of the self. At this level, the concepts of self-ownership and self-preservation shape individuals to follow certain routines in their behavior, to treat their bodies in specific ways, to organize their time in a particular fashion. In performing these routines, individuals participate in the collection and dissemination of that knowledge of individual bodies and groups of bodies which, as Foucault and Arendt in their different ways revealed, is endemic to modernity. (shrink)